1968 MERCURY Cougar- John and Gail

Photo and story copyright D. S. Brown except for Cougar brochure and owner's manual which is copyright Mercury.

I can recall a friend of mine and I staring at our reflections in the shiny doors of his dad's 1970 Cougar. As we admired the sleek lines of the car his dad gruffly complained, "It looks good to you kids, but it has no floors!"  The car was only about five years old, but it had wooden boards under the carpeting to prevent his feet from going through onto the road. The Cougars I owned later always required new floors due to rust out despite the bodies looking absolutely perfect.  

The other Cougar I recall from my childhood was parked on a ranch in the country. Despite dirt and dust around it, the blue 1970 XR7 was immaculately clean with pristine white seats. I stretched to look into the passenger window to see that there was a clock in the wood grain glove box area. The owner explained to a spellbound group of kids what a Cleveland engine was.

I’ve owned and driven Cougars from the first generation on the 111 inch wheelbase. I really like the taut lithe lines of the 1967-8. It was a small car and easy to park, but it suffered from unibody thump and fragility when carrying four passengers. The 1969-70 Cougar had filled out to typical intermediate size. It gained 120 pounds and 3 inches extra width and length while the roof was shaved a fraction lower. It felt solid while retaining enough of the original body cues to still look good.

Those cars survived teenage antics without major mishaps. No matter how hard I beat on the brakes, they held up. The small block Ford engines never had a reputation as being killer fast the way their 427s and 428s were but they soldiered on with anvil toughness. Water pumps and alternators blew up from the constant diet of crazy revs those engines lived through. In the final analysis the Cougars were quick, but only the Eliminator big blocks made it as muscle cars. The Cleveland 351 was a real runner but most other small block Cougars weren't meant for the ET crowd. They really shone in relaxed driving.

The Cougar mystique was sufficient to offset the frustrations inherent in 1960s Mercurys. The electrical systems were bad. The sequential lights stopped working whenever trunk mounted control boxes built up too much corrosion. Most people eventually bypassed the stock system with a solid state unit. The stock carbs and transmissions were a nightmare in cold weather. The Autolites could drive you crazy with icing and no starts. Holley performance carburetors probably prevented an early heart attack for many an owner.

The Ford automatic transmissions wouldn't budge when you put them in reverse if the outside temps were below zero. A friend of mine had a mid sixties Thunderbird that he left in reverse with the engine running while he ate breakfast. When the car finally started to creep backwards, he would jump up and hop in the car. Various Fords I have driven took 30 seconds to a minute before being persuaded to move backwards after reverse was selected in freezing weather.

When you are behind the wheel enjoying a Cougar that has been all sorted out, you forget all of those problems. The really huge issue with Cougars was rust. More so than other sixties classics, the floors vaporized at an astonishing rate. The Mercury cars also seemed to absorb shocks less effectively. I broke sway bars, transmission mounts, engine mounts and shock tower bracings during typical high speed two lane blacktop maneuvers that Chrysler cars had endured without breaking. GM cars also held together a bit better. 

In order to get a boulevard ride, there are rubber bushings galore throughout the suspension which caused initial testers back in the day to lament the lousy handling of the cars. However, when Cougars are used in the gentle manner they were designed for they are wonderful stylish cruisers stuffed with 1960s gadgets that made driving a special experience. Cougars were meant as an antidote to the daily driving commute for low cost and they really managed this well.

The Cougar was the Mercury version of the Mustang. Aside from coming up with a very beautiful unique body, Mercury extended the wheelbase 3 inches and modified the suspension for a smoother ride. The idea was to bridge the gap between Thunderbird and Mustang. The Cougar was introduced in a big press release in St Thomas, Bahamas, August 2, 1966 at dusk. A white Cougar was driven onto the beach out of a WWII landing craft.  

Leading up to this day, auto journalists had received 'Cougarburgers' from the promo department, and announcements from the back of a plane. A lot of promo effort was expended with tie in items such as a "Cougarburger barbeque set" and a giant billboard announcement. Mercury was sued by Jaguar because the Cougar emblem was too similar to their Jaguar logo. I don't know why they bothered. The copycat concept was obvious, but no one was going to confuse the two cars. The Cougar looked nothing like the Jaguar and couldn’t perform comparably.

The Cougar was a total success at imparting an aura of specialness. Owners always had an experience when they got in their Cougars even just making a mundane grocery trip. The sense of uniqueness never wears off. This was exacerbated when driving a Cougar n the 1980s when everyone was driving anonymous compact transportation appliances. Basic economy cars lacked elaborate sequential turn signals, hidden headlights, jet age consoles in the headliner or graceful styling.

The Cougar was criticized upon release for having sacrificed precision in steering for a plush ride. The car had a lot of sound deadener and a longer wheelbase than the Mustang which added weight and slowed the car noticeably when fitted with the standard 289 engine. The concept was to place the Cougar as a “junior Thunderbird”.  Early promotion steered the car away from the crassness of the drag strip, placing it in the driveways of elegant upscale buyers. When the GT packages finally came out the Cougar still didn’t threaten other muscle cars. The 390 GT looked aggressive but only pulled 16 in the quarter. The 427 sounded fast on paper but it was a 15 second quarter miler. If you didn't need to terrorize every other car on the road, the Cougar was a huge success within context as a personal luxury car with some sportiness.

Comparison of standard Cougar dash (top) with XR7 dash (bottom). (Copyright Mercury Cougar Owner's Manual)

When the XR7 came out in January of 1967, the Cougar really came into its own. The genuine leather seats, full console, map pockets in the doors and fake wood dash were intended to invoke the Jaguar. It was filled with gauges using European style functional white letters on black. There were toggle switches that directly ripped off Jaguar and an overhead console similar to the Thunderbird with map lights and other gadgets. There was a rally clock in the console and fake wood grain on the steering wheel. The only gripe was that the oil pressure gauge was way across in front of the passenger seat. The 1969 and 1970 XR7 fixed this by putting the clock in the passenger area, relocating the oil pressure gauge within driver view.

The second year of the Cougar in 1968 was a sales disappointment when compared to the terrific first year of sales. The car was essentially the same but had some detail changes. The 1967 three spoke steering wheel was replaced with a two spoke wheel fronted by a big middle cushion, doubtless safety motivated. The console map storage bin was gone. Safety items like collapsible steering column and side marker lights were welcome improvements.

The 289 engine was stroked to 302 cubes. Many manufacturers went to bigger displacement via stroking for 1968 because this helped emissions levels. The extra cubes also helped compensate for the power drain of the emission systems. Chevy took their 283 to 307 in 1968. Even six cylinders, such as Pontiacs' Chevy derived 230 was expanded to 250. The car testers were not impressed with 1968 engines, complaining about drivability and hard starting. The emissions tinkering created some issues with idle and responsiveness. The performance crowd was appalled by the loss of pep. But in hindsight, the problems were minor and after all these years, the cars run pretty well.

The car magazines of the time said that the buyer for a Cougar was someone that wanted a Thunderbird but wasn't willing to splurge that much on a new car. Interestingly, John, the owner of the OOCC 1968 Cougar since new says,

"The Thunderbird was too expensive, so I opted for a Cougar."

John bought a base Cougar with the 302 2 barrel engine from Zephyr Mercury Sales, a large dealer at that time. In 1968 Zephyr was located at 130 West Broadway. Broadway was and still is a main artery running through the heart of Vancouver. John’s childhood friend was doing well in the world of financing. The friend had good contacts at Zephyr which led John to order his car from them. He placed an order for a green Cougar with a black bench seat interior. John got the small V8, power brakes and steering, radio and automatic transmission. By the time all the options were checked off, John's 1968 Cougar cost $4,000.00.

$4,000.00 was a lot of money back in 1968 for anyone. At the time, John was an insurance agent who had just started to build up his business in Vancouver, BC. Sales calls and the birth of a daughter necessitated a car. John laments buying a car, preferring to see the money spent on a piece of land. John had land in Ladner, BC which he sold to get the $4,000.00 for the Cougar. When the highway tunnel went through that area, the land he had dumped a few years earlier was now worth $250,000.00.

"But we needed transportation."

Despite John's disinterest in cars, the Cougar really grew on him. He and his daughter who was four at the time took the bus down to Zephyr Mercury on Broadway just past Cambie Street to pick up their new car when it arrived in late January or early February of 1968. It was an exciting moment for the two of them driving home in their new Cougar.

John can't imagine ever selling it now and is looking into spending quite a lot of money on it to restore the rusted floors. "It was a good car and I grew attached to it." Every time he comes home and parks he looks over at the car and it reminds him of times past.

The small house John and his wife Gail started out with at Carnarvon and 10th Avenue didn't have a garage. The Cougar wasn't pampered. It was out in the elements from day one. It rains in Vancouver steadily from October until May. The roads are often salted November through till March. 

The body is remarkably free of obvious rust despite years of hard weather. A corner of the bumper and the inner fenders show rust. Otherwise the exterior looks decent. My Cougar and other friends' Cougars also rusted along the inside fender tops, and eventually developed a leak into the cowl. John's Cougar has hidden rust above the wheel well openings, but as a twenty footer still looks straight and shiny. The Cougar was repainted once in the original color which has helped it to survive. Below is a view of the trunk where inner quarter rust is visible. The trunk lock cylinder cover was stolen at some point and replaced with an old XR7 badge. The rear driver side window trim is fastened down with an ordinary hardware screw.

Pictured below is the air cleaner intake snorkel with a Zephyr Mercury sticker affixed to it by the dealership back in 1968.

The vinyl roof shows rust bulges from Vancouver rain. This is the second vinyl roof on the car. The first was replaced at the time of a repaint in the correct factory color.

The view below of the rear window also shows the grey carpet that John put into the car to help protect the package tray from the sun damage which has cracked the top edge of the rear seat cushion.

Several years into the ownership of the Cougar, John sold his first house so that they could move to a larger house. John's daughter was handicapped. The garage at the new house was converted into an indoor pool to accommodate her special needs. Because of this, the Cougar was still parked out in the elements. John's first house was 0.2 miles from work. Now that his new house was 1.7 miles from work, the Cougar was used daily to ferry John to his work. For years the Cougar could be seen parked Monday to Friday in the alley behind his office. Although the car spent each day getting covered in pine needles and sap it was regularly washed and well maintained.

Once John retired, sightings of the car diminished until 2006 when it was taken off the road. The Cougar wasn't taken on many long vacation trips and only occasionally travelled to see a client. Taking the short 3.4 mile round trip work route into account with two weeks off for vacation the car logged 816 miles per year for work beginning in the early 1970s and ceasing with retirement at the turn of the century. John figures that there isn't more than 100,000 miles on the car. The door lock cylinders are jammed so it's hard to see inside to determine the odometer reading, but it appears to be 70,812.

The Cougar is parked behind the house still out in the elements as it always was. John and his wife Gail are busy assisting with the raising of Grandchildren, so the eventual restoration of the car is on hold right now.

Gail remembered driving the Cougar infrequently, but it was always memorable. "That car drove me, instead of me driving it. It had so much power!" John was pretty much the exclusive driver of the car and he admits that he really got to love the car despite his initial reluctance to spend so much money on it. The family took several trips into the interior of BC with the Cougar. They had a ranch up in the Caribou and spent many summers up there.

Gail has her own car for running errands and John recently bought a used car recommended by his mechanic. The new car is a modern GM that drinks gas compared to the old Cougar's modest thirst.

In the final years of service the Cougar was in frequently for small things. A typical visit was when the sequential lights were rewired to simply come on all at once by the garage when they failed. John's mechanic discouraged him from continuing to drive the Cougar because the floorboards had rusted out. Despite suffering from structural weakness, the car was running well. John said that in the last few years of use it had become difficult to get parts for the car. All of his life, John treated the car as a regular car and took it to a regular garage despite the fact that gradually it was transforming into a specialty item.

The radiator was replaced by Marpole Radiator as the tag attests. Marpole Radiators is still in business in Vancouver, B.C.

At a certain point a 40 year old car is 'out of the loop' and has to be treated as a collector item. John is now faced with spending a lot of money to fix the body in order to keep the car going. This is a line that John hasn't wanted to cross up to now. He isn't a car nut and prefers to restrict his involvement with a vehicle to regular maintenance and ordinary driving. To quote Gail it is an 'accident' that they have a collector vehicle. There was no intention of keeping it forever. It just worked out that way.  

John and Gail are regular people with busy lives who don't lavish a lot of time and effort into cars and yet even they became so enamored of their car that they couldn't part with it. That says a lot for the people who designed and created the Mercury Cougar.